I'm working on a team that is miniaturizing a synthetic aperture radar system.
The amplifiers, processing, and data storage used to take up most of the space of a small cargo plane. Then it got down to four half-racks. Now it is the size of a dishwasher.
We hope to get it drone-sized. It is a never-ending series of interesting technical problems that span the entire STEM range, including RF, network, system, electrical and mechanical engineering, HPC, data science, voodoo-mathematics I will never understand, system administration, and plain old software development.
Everyone here is expected to cross-train in various disciplines. My background is CS but since starting here I have done electrical and mechanical engineering work including diagnosing micro-fractures, visible only through a microscope, in connectors on a bunch of VPX chassis stuff, caused by bad soldering work by the manufacturer.
On top of all of that once or twice a year we all get to go on operational deployments of the system. This year we went out and imaged thousands of miles of coastline, 6 engineers crammed in a tiny airplane hopping from airstrip to airstrip in support of a coastal erosion monitoring program. Data scientists are expected to haul around amplifiers and radar engineers are expected to live patch code while in the air.
The only reason I got this job was because I was a bored programmer teaching a Linux course as a side-hustle and a bunch of engineers came through and started asking questions way beyond the scope of the class. They were radar guys struggling to learn Linux and a couple of post-class drinks later I had an interview.
I guess my only advice would be to have a side-gig and network as much as possible, peppering everyone you meet with questions about what they do.
If what they do sounds cool, ask for an interview.
The amplifiers, processing, and data storage used to take up most of the space of a small cargo plane. Then it got down to four half-racks. Now it is the size of a dishwasher.
We hope to get it drone-sized. It is a never-ending series of interesting technical problems that span the entire STEM range, including RF, network, system, electrical and mechanical engineering, HPC, data science, voodoo-mathematics I will never understand, system administration, and plain old software development.
Everyone here is expected to cross-train in various disciplines. My background is CS but since starting here I have done electrical and mechanical engineering work including diagnosing micro-fractures, visible only through a microscope, in connectors on a bunch of VPX chassis stuff, caused by bad soldering work by the manufacturer.
On top of all of that once or twice a year we all get to go on operational deployments of the system. This year we went out and imaged thousands of miles of coastline, 6 engineers crammed in a tiny airplane hopping from airstrip to airstrip in support of a coastal erosion monitoring program. Data scientists are expected to haul around amplifiers and radar engineers are expected to live patch code while in the air.
The only reason I got this job was because I was a bored programmer teaching a Linux course as a side-hustle and a bunch of engineers came through and started asking questions way beyond the scope of the class. They were radar guys struggling to learn Linux and a couple of post-class drinks later I had an interview.
I guess my only advice would be to have a side-gig and network as much as possible, peppering everyone you meet with questions about what they do.
If what they do sounds cool, ask for an interview.